New School Streets at Benthal and St Scholastica’s launched this week
New School Streets have been launched this week at Benthal and St Scholastica’s primary schools to help children walk and cycle to school and improve road safety at the school gates.
With the school-run accounting for a fifth of London’s morning traffic, the new School Streets will also help more parents leave their cars at home, improving air quality in the morning.
The new School Streets are two of 40 the Council is introducing at primary schools in the borough, as part of its plans to rebuild a greener Hackney in the wake of the pandemic.
All are being introduced on a trial basis using experimental traffic orders, ensuring residents and businesses can have their say online or in writing during implementation.
The Council will monitor traffic around each area, which it will consider, alongside resident feedback, before deciding whether to make the schemes permanent.
The School Streets will operate between 8.30 and 9.30am, and 3 and 4pm during school term time.
When I took over responsibility for transport in Hackney in the summer of 2019, I pledged to introduce School Streets at all Hackney primary schools wherever possible, so I’m proud we have delivered the largest number of School Streets in the UK in 2020. These will help children walk and cycle to school more safely, and encourage parents, who often live very close to schools, to eliminate journeys by car, improving air quality and reducing congestion.
The School Streets we’re introducing are part of wider plans to rebuild a greener Hackney in the wake of the pandemic, ensuring that the benefits we witness during lockdown - greener, quieter streets, cleaner air and more walking and cycling - are secured for future generations.
In line with guidance from the Department for Transport, on-street measures will be implemented under experimental traffic orders, which give residents an opportunity to have their say on how measures work in practice before any decision is made on whether or not to make them permanent.
Residents can view the plans and have their say at: rebuildingagreenerhackney.commonplace.is.
Department for Transport guidance states that: ‘The government therefore expects local authorities to make significant changes to their road layouts to give more space to cyclists and pedestrians. Such changes will help embed altered behaviours and demonstrate the positive effects of active travel.’
Transport for London has also issued guidance to local authorities in their Streetspace for London plan, which has three main objectives: reallocation of road space, delivery of strategic cycle routes and low traffic neighbourhoods.